Secrets of the Serrado

Roberto Burle Marx is the Brazilian landscape architect who contributed with Niemeyer and Costa to the design of the city. He took advantage of this natural wealth, and peppered the city with patches of color that mutate and transform the city throughout the year, allowing the nature to enter the cityscape.
He took a genuine interest in the local flora, which was until then mostly disdained by his fellow countrymen (read here). The Brazilian nature is rich and diverse, with the country at the scale of the continent.
The cerrado, the natural ecosystem surrounding Brasilia, and most of the Minas and Goais states, is very special and unique.  Like a savannah, with bushes and tall grass, termite towers, a rich variety of trees, some with a shape reminiscent of Africa, it is an exotic landscape that enters the city. It almost feel at times, when I look on these slopes near our house, as if a lion or a zebra could peak their head behind a bush. Trees keep blooming along the various months of the year, notwithstanding the changes of seasons. Strange fruits hang from the branches of the trees, the diversity of the flora is surprising, with more than 800 variety of trees found in this ecosystem. When we ate at Vago Fogo, near Pirenopolis, we tasted a number of dishes using the fruits of some of these.
Here is a few images of some of the strange fruits found here.